Digital Foundry's Thomas Morgan recently conducted an in-depth review of Bloodborne running on the ShadPS4 emulator, specifically focusing on the performance and technical enhancements made possible by the modding community. For his analysis, Morgan utilized the ShadPS4 0.5.1 build developed by diegolix29, which is rooted in a custom branch by raphaelthegreat. This particular build was found to deliver optimal performance on a PC equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X processor and a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU.
In his testing, Morgan highlighted the necessity of the Vertex Explosion Fix mod, which is crucial for eliminating visual artifacts such as stretched or mispositioned polygons. Although this mod disables the option to customize the character's face before starting the game, it effectively resolves these visual glitches. Importantly, Morgan noted that no additional mods are needed as the ShadPS4 emulator itself comes with integrated enhancements. These include a dedicated menu for toggling various improvements, such as enabling 60 fps gameplay, boosting resolution to 4K, and turning off chromatic aberration.
Despite some occasional stuttering, Morgan observed that Bloodborne generally maintained a smooth 60 fps. He also experimented with higher resolutions, testing at 1440p and 1800p. While these settings offered enhanced image detail, they also resulted in performance degradation and frequent crashes. Consequently, Morgan advises sticking to 1080p or 1152p resolutions for the best experience on ShadPS4, mirroring the PS4's native settings.
Morgan concluded by praising the ShadPS4 team's groundbreaking work in making PS4 emulation a reality. He acknowledged that while Bloodborne runs impressively on the emulator, there are still some technical challenges to overcome.
